About Growing Inclusive Markets

The Growing Inclusive Markets (GIM) Initiative is a UNDP-led global multi-stakeholder research and advocacy initiative that seeks to understand, enable and inspire the development of more inclusive business models around the globe that will help to create new opportunities and better lives for many of the world’s poor. By doing so, GIM contributes to human development and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The GIM Initiative involves a broad range of partners from developed and developing countries, has produced global, regional and national reports, action-oriented research tools, a web-based knowledge management platform, and generates capacity building, network building and knowledge sharing at the local level.

The GIM Initiative is part of the UNDP Private Sector Divisionwhich also hosts the Business Call to Action (BCtA), a global initiative that challenges private sector companies to adapt their core business models in support of poverty eradication and growth in developing countries, and the Inclusive Markets Development (IMD)programme, which seeks to promote inclusive market policies and projects globally.

The GIM Advisory Board comprises 28 leading institutions from the private sector, development field and academia. Together, these institutions advise on GIM activities and provide support for our work. GIM has also formed a network of 45 Southern academic institutions, from Peru to Kenya to the Philippines that contribute insights from the field and act as a powerful advocacy network as well.

Objectives

The Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative’s main objectives are two-fold:

To deepen the understanding of how inclusive business models can contribute significantly to sustainable human development.

To enable the creation of more inclusive business models by informing individual, collective and policy action to improve market environments.

Beginnings

Growing Inclusive Markets was conceived in 2006, following the success of 2004′s Unleashing Entrepreneurship: Making Business Work for the Poor, which was prepared by the Commission on the Private Sector and Development at the request of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. GIM grew out of a need to build on Unleashing Entrepreneurship and other existing literature for a better understanding of how market-based approaches to human development can ‘do good’ for people living in poverty while also being good for business.